I'll always love you, babe, Period
by YourswithLove
Summary: A silly drabble about how Finn copes when Rachel's Aunt Flo comes to visit. New York Finchel.


**I'll always love you, baby. Period. **

They had a calendar in the loft. It was pinned on a cork board that Finn and Rachel had found on the sidewalk when they were stumbling home, quite drunk, after the birthday party of Rachel's class mate, Ruby. Finn knew that a sober Rachel would have lectured him on the hazards of collecting from a pile of hard rubbish but inebriated Rachel was highly suggestible.

"We can pin stuff to it," Finn exclaimed loudly.

"Like Kurt's new Trilby." Dissolving into giggles, Rachel had allowed her level of intoxication to unleash a mischievous streak.

"I meant maybe bills and notes but shit, let's do that," he agreed enthusiastically.

_(They didn't though. When they reached the loft the motion of the elevator turned Rachel's stomach and she spent the rest of the night hunched around the porcelain with an equally green looking Finn hovering, holding back her hair. The Trilby was later dispensed with when Santana told Kurt, "That is the stupidest looking hat you own. Its even worse that sailor's cap you think pulls together an outfit.")_

Finn's life was detailed among the dated square boxes in an almost depressingly comprehensive way. Assignment due dates, shifts at work, birthdays, faculty advisor appointments – everything was chronicled, mostly by Rachel but eventually when being organized was not only practical but necessary, Kurt and Santana added bits they needed reminding about or wanted to remember.

It became a complex, functional document marked with hieroglyphics, abbreviations and color that symbolized something significant or specific to their own lives. Finn noticed that Santana had a particular thing for singular letters marked with a variety of colored gel pens. He theorized with Rachel, who was not averse to participating in housemate gossip, about the code but even with the two of them they couldn't break it. One Saturday morning, after Santana noisily farewelled Brittany at the front door, she retrieved a pink pen and added a letter 'T' to the box with that day's date, sauntering to her room without a backwards glance.

"She's marking down her sex partners!" Rachel shouted to Finn from the floor space they'd cordoned off as a living room, forgetting that they had curtains for doors.

Finn was stirring hollandaise sauce for their eggs Benedict's, sans ham for Rachel, and dropped the spoon to examine the new notation.

"But that was Brittany," he remarked obviously, putting his arm around Rachel's shoulders to quell her disappointment, "And her name doesn't start with 'T'."

"You're right," replied Rachel, sadly. But Finn still believed Santana's letter encryption must involve dating somehow.

_(Turns out they were right. Santana, annoyed at their frequent hypotheses, which they thought were private but were actually outrageously loud, explained her system._

"_I don't mark down names," Santana explained simply, "Because that would be disrespectful. Instead I write down what we did."_

"_Oh," Rachel said, "Like F for food?"_

"_No," Santana laughed at Rachel's naïvety. She used actions to give Rachel visual clues, "Like 'F' for fingering.'T' for tribbing. 'S' for strap on. Get it?"_

"_Yes," Rachel's embarrassment made her terse._

_In an effort to educate herself about sex, Rachel asked Finn to download porn featuring these three acts, which they watched together. Viewing the material, of course, led to very inventive sex and not since watching 'Sesame Street' when he was a kid had Finn enjoyed the letter F, T and S more. Incidentally they never deleted the material from Rachel's laptop but continued saving videos for 'Saucy Saturday's', under the file name of 'Finn and Rachel's Private Stuff – Don't Watch!')_

Possibly one of the most useful parts of the calendar for Finn was the little red star Rachel drew in the bottom right hand corner for around 5 days of the month. He'd always been quite good at correlating activities on the board with Rachel's moods but the little red star propelled him right back to health class. He knew the red color was literal and though Rachel was not always ruled by her actual hormones, Finn felt it best to take a lesson out of Rachel's book and be organised.

He researched what Rachel might be feeling. Which hormones were affecting her attitude and what she might need_ (food, feminine hygiene products, girly movies)_. He invented his own code, using a combination of colors and symbols but mostly he observed her to identify any patterns in her behavior. He might have done it for Santana too – but it wasn't necessary – she was a bitch all month long.

He didn't always need the calendar but some months it was invaluable.

He noticed a link between her having crippling migraines and the time when she would be ovulating. He asked Santana's new girlfriend, a medical student, how she could avoid that but she'd sneered at him.

"Unless she agrees to have her uterus ripped out and you're fine with never having children its not an option," she'd replied darkly, her eyes boring holes into him like it was actually his fault that women ovulated.

However, Santana's worst ever girlfriend cheered up to tell him that foods containing tyramine should be avoided so he always made sure Rachel didn't eat citrus and chocolate and drank heaps of water that week. And when that didn't work he helped darken their room, adding a heavy wool blanket to their curtain wall to block out the light. Sitting with her in the dark, resting his cool palm on her forehead he stroked her hair gently. _(He'd never reveal that he enjoyed when she wanted him to be with her this way. He loved being the only person able to give her what she needed.)_

One month, the week before the red star was going to come in effect Finn finished class early and dropped by the Farmers' Market. A dip in her estrogen could be helped with some whole-wheat pasta and fresh vegetables – all the strange things Rachel liked but often couldn't afford because of the cost of New York.

When he got home he was confronted with a ravenous Rachel devouring the left over fried chicken he been planning on eating for lunch. Teary, she asked him not to tell Kurt or Santana, especially in light of the radical vegetarianism lectures she'd been spouting lately.

"I just couldn't cope with all their retaliation, Finn," she'd moaned.

And of course he agreed, after all he loved her. _(And she'd totally covered for him when he ruined Kurt's Hermes scarf, mopping up a milk spill. How was he supposed to know what it was worth? It looked exactly like a tea towel they had. Rachel slyly suggested Kurt had left it at one of his hookup's places since he refused to bring anyone home – he wasn't a fan of the travelling noise through their fabric walls.)_

To help Rachel feel better about breaking her vegetarian vow he forced her to dress up in faded jeans and a chambray shirt and took her on a date to a greasy spoon café a few blocks away. He styled her hair in two braids, insist they adopt fake Southern accents and pretend their names were Jack and Sally, chatting animatedly to the wait staff about their lives in Georgia while eating their fried chicken. Finn ritualized their date by piggybacking her there every _month (to conserve energy)_ when she felt she needed a protein boost that legumes couldn't provide. _(When he proposed to her a few years later at Bow Bridge, he took Rachel on their date to the café a few weeks later and proposed again as 'Jack' – Sally deserved her happy ending as well, he told her.)_

Eventually, Rachel began taking the contraceptive pill, which regulated her cycle. She decided when it was best for her to skip a period _(like when it coincided with Finn's birthday_) and she stopped having migraines too _(which Finn was a tiny bit disappointed about, although he never wanted Rachel to experience pain.)_

When they all moved out of the loft and into their own apartments Finn and Rachel still kept track of their lives on a calendar. It became crowded when Rachel started rehearsals and starred on Broadway, as Annie Oakley. It was crazy when Finn had teacher – parent interviews. And when Rachel fell pregnant, Finn revisited his colors and symbols system to annotate her moods, although it was all quite random and he became a secret believer in chaos theory. He decided to retire his system and just go with the flow _(or he did, until about 14 years after their daughter, Ava was born. But that was a whole different story.) _


End file.
